The rotating element currently spins non stop - so right now there's no spin up time - we'll see what the future holds though - the thing is that its cool to have things spin so it spins all the time - its great for trailers.

1) Can we get a gamemode that puts us in a fleet and we work our way up the ranks? till we command the entire fleet in combat?
I think it'd be a nice way to get used to the combat, and fly large ships without having to go through a ton of work for them.

That sounds like a separate game actually. Because this isn't a MMO and its a game made by me - you won't have to go through a ton of work. EG: 2nd ship about 2-3 hours of game play, 3rd ship about 2 more hours. At some point things should accelerate a lot when you have money making ships, the ability to capture ships and a base to build ships.

2) Are big ships inherently weak against fighter sized craft?
The only reason this should happen is gameplay, to make sure players keep fighters around to deal with other fighters.

Its not so much rock paper scissors. Big ships with huge beams would have a really hard time hitting a fighter, big ships with spinal mounted guns and with giant turrets won't be hitting fighters either. But they have defensive turrets that won't have a fighter shooting at the big guy forever without consequence.

It should be interesting to see - because some larger ships will be somewhat of a pain to get - early in the game - so in case the player has a military frigate (via theft), they might not want to risk it in battle but instead send in fighters to mop up (after recalling the frigate). Then replace the lost fighters via a friendly base's shop.

There's a simple "anti capital" flag that has weapons do double damage to cap ships - so things like bombers exist.

3) How deadly are those beams?
I remember Freespace fights being a pain when multiple capital ships would have beams of instagib every which way.

They aren't like that - but hopefully I'll spice them up with "more damage the longer/closer" type functionality. Also for trailers I sometimes beef up damage so that its more dramatic.

4) How final are the explosion and beam graphics?
They are currently a little too bright for my liking, tuning them down so they are darker (and less realistic) but have more obvious colors would be nice.

They are the exact effects from part 1. I don't tend to invest much time in the effects because I have no art skills, and this realm is much more specialized than 3D models/backgrounds/GUI/etc. So we'll see - perfection will surely evade this one man + contractors project - but it will be memorable.

chaosavy wrote:The rotating element currently spins non stop - so right now there's no spin up time - we'll see what the future holds though - the thing is that its cool to have things spin so it spins all the time - its great for trailers.

I meant warm up time on the Beams, sorry

chaosavy wrote:That sounds like a separate game actually. Because this isn't a MMO and its a game made by me - you won't have to go through a ton of work. EG: 2nd ship about 2-3 hours of game play, 3rd ship about 2 more hours. At some point things should accelerate a lot when you have money making ships, the ability to capture ships and a base to build ships.

Cool. Good enough.

chaosavy wrote:Its not so much rock paper scissors. Big ships with huge beams would have a really hard time hitting a fighter, big ships with spinal mounted guns and with giant turrets won't be hitting fighters either. But they have defensive turrets that won't have a fighter shooting at the big guy forever without consequence.

It should be interesting to see - because some larger ships will be somewhat of a pain to get - early in the game - so in case the player has a military frigate (via theft), they might not want to risk it in battle but instead send in fighters to mop up (after recalling the frigate). Then replace the lost fighters via a friendly base's shop.

There's a simple "anti capital" flag that has weapons do double damage to cap ships - so things like bombers exist.

The idea behind my question was to gauge if there would ever be a point that fighters simply become irrelevant, which happens when big ships have enough anti-fighter turrets, and enough anti-capital main weapons.

chaosavy wrote:They are the exact effects from part 1. I don't tend to invest much time in the effects because I have no art skills, and this realm is much more specialized than 3D models/backgrounds/GUI/etc. So we'll see - perfection will surely evade this one man + contractors project - but it will be memorable.

Cool, if I knew anything about that stuff, I would offer, but unfortunately I do not.
Lets hope you can get it looking good in combination with everything else.

So if you don't build fighters... you have 30 ships less, and that's a slaughter. EVEN if fighters don't do too much damage (but they do ok) - then weapons aimed at them would instead be aimed at your other ships, plus the enemy fleet's fighter's guns aimed solely on your other ships.

Fleet caps are a bit annoying to players - but they are there for a reason, they make things a lot simpler on the dev side.

chaosavy wrote:Fleet caps are a bit annoying to players - but they are there for a reason, they make things a lot simpler on the dev side.

It's why the "story missions" in X3 never really worked.
You just can't balance a mission so that it works equally well for a player with a medium fighter and another with 5 destroyers.

If the fleet cap is increased THROUGH story missions then you have a pretty good idea what kind of forces the player will bring.
Doesn't mean it makes it easy to balance. Just more likely to make it work well before 2030. =)

chaosavy wrote:Fleet caps are a bit annoying to players - but they are there for a reason, they make things a lot simpler on the dev side.

It's why the "story missions" in X3 never really worked.
You just can't balance a mission so that it works equally well for a player with a medium fighter and another with 5 destroyers.

If the fleet cap is increased THROUGH story missions then you have a pretty good idea what kind of forces the player will bring.
Doesn't mean it makes it easy to balance. Just more likely to make it work well before 2030. =)

I have never liked fleet caps, but this stems from Homeworld 1/2.
Where I just wanted to build hundreds of frigates with my resources!
Frigate armada yo!

Silverware wrote:I'm meaning, that at worst, when the game is out we can change the files to have black space!

Yes, there is that, Silverware, but I still wonder if Paul's stand concerning this matter may have contributed to the poor performance of the KS. I've seen a few comments made about it. If it fails it isn't the end of the world for Void Destroyer 2 but it's funding Paul can ill afford to lose.

Have you by any chance checked out House of the Dying Sun?
If not, then you should. I *really* enjoyed the command mechanics available in it, and the flight model was no slouch either.
You may want to take a look, and see if there are any control mechanisms that would work well with Void Destroyer.
I have a feeling it could benefit from an easy to master control mechanic for wings or fleets.